Boys' Book of Indian Warriors Part 26

Keokuk came, to attend this council, and to receive him back into the nation. Keokuk arrived riding grandly in two canoes lashed side by side; a canopy over him and his wives with him, and medals on his breast.

That was rather different from ball and chain, and old Black-hawk's head sank upon his chest. He felt as bitter as Logan the Mingo had felt.

Before he finally settled down in a lodge built near Iowaville on the lower Des Moines River, Iowa, he made other trips through the East.

Keokuk went, also--but it was "General Black-hawk" for whom the people clamored.

He died on October 3, 1838, at his home. His last speech was made at a Fourth of July banquet, at Fort Madison, Iowa, where he was a guest of honor.

"Rock River was a beautiful country. I liked my towns, my corn-fields, and the home of my people. I fought for it. It is now yours; keep it as we did. It will bear you good crops.

"I once was a great warrior. I am now poor. Keokuk put me down, but do not blame him. I am old. I have looked upon the Mississippi since I was a child. I love the Great River. I look upon it now. I shake hands with you, and I hope you are my friends."

These were some of his words.

He was seventy-one when he died; a spare, wrinkled old man with sharp, fiery face and flashing eye. He picked out his grave--at a place about half a mile from his cabin, where, he said, he had led his Sacs in a great battle with the Iowas.

All his people, and the neighboring whites, mourned him. He was buried sitting up, clad in the uniform given him at Washington, by the Secretary of War. He wore three medals, from President Jackson, ex-President John Quincy Adams, and the City of Boston. Between his knees was placed a cane presented to him by Henry Clay, the statesman; at his right side was placed a sword presented to him by President Jackson.

All his best things were buried with him. They included tobacco, food and moccasins, to last him on a three days' journey to spirit land.

The grave was covered by a board roof. A United States flag, and a post with his name and age and deeds, were erected over him. A picket fence twelve feet high was built around the grave.

He left an old wife--the only wife that he had ever taken. He thought a great deal of her. He rarely drank whiskey, he fought it among his people; he was opposed to torture; he had treated prisoners kindly; he had waged war in defense, as he believed, of his own country; and altogether he had been a good man in his Indian way.

His bones were dug up by a white doctor, and strung on a wire to decorate an office in Illinois. Black-hawk's sons did not like this, and had the bones brought back. They were stored in the historical collection at Burlington, where in 1855 a fire burned them.

Black-hawk probably did not care what became of his old bones. He was done with them. The white race had over-flowed the land that he loved, and the bones of his fathers, and he had ceased fighting.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BIRD-WOMAN GUIDE (1805-1806)

SACAGAWEA HELPS THE WHITE MEN

This is the story of one slight little Indian woman, aged sixteen, who opened the trail across the continent, for the march of the United States flag.

When in March, 1804, the United States took over that French Province of Louisiana which extended from the upper Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains, a mult.i.tude of Indians changed white fathers.

These Western Indians were much different from the Eastern Indians.

They were long-hair Indians, and horse Indians, accustomed to the rough buffalo chase, and a wide range over vast treeless s.p.a.ces.

To learn about them and their country, in May, 1804, there started up the Missouri River, by boats from St. Louis, the famed Government exploring party commanded by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark.

It was an army expedition: twenty-three enlisted men, a hunter, a squad of boatmen, Captain Clark's black servant York, and a squad of other soldiers for an escort part of the way. In all, forty-three, under the two captains.

Their orders were, to ascend the Missouri River to its head; and, if possible, to cross the mountains and travel westward still, to the Columbia River and its mouth at the Pacific Ocean of the Oregon country.

No white man knew what lay before them, for no white man ever had made the trip. The trail was a trail in the dark.

This fall they had gone safely as far as the hewn-timber towns of the Mandan Indians, in central North Dakota; here they wintered, and met the little Bird-woman.

Her Indian name was Sa-ca-ga-we-a, from two Minnetaree words meaning "bird" and "woman." But she was not a Minnetaree, who were a division of the Sioux nation, living in North Dakota near the Mandans. She was a Sho-sho-ni, or Snake, woman, from the distant Rocky Mountains, and had been captured by the Minnetarees. Between the Minnetarees of the plains and the Snakes of the mountains there was always war.

Now at only sixteen years of age she was the wife of Toussaint Chaboneau, a leather-faced, leather-clad French-Canadian trader living with the Mandans. He had bought her from the Minnetarees--and how much he paid in trade is not stated, but she was the daughter of a chief and rated a good squaw. Toussaint had another wife; he needed a younger one. Therefore he bought Sacagawea, to mend his moccasins and greet him with a smile for his heart and warm water for his tired feet. His old wife had grown rather cross and grunty.

Chaboneau was engaged as interpreter, this winter, and moved over to the white camp. Sacagawea proved to be such a cheerful, willing little woman that the captains and the men made much of her. And when, in February, a tiny boy arrived to her and Toussaint, there was much delight.

A baby in the camp helped to break the long dull spell of forty-below-zero weather, when two suns shone feebly through the ice-crystaled air.

A thousand miles it was, yet, to the Rocky or Shining Mountains, by the river trail. In the Mandan towns, and in the American camp, Sacagawea was the only person who ever had been as far as those mountains. They were the home of her people, but nearly three years had pa.s.sed since she had been taken captive by the Minnetarees.

Could she still speak the Snake tongue? Certainly! Did she remember the trail to the country of the Snakes? Yes! Was there a way across the mountains? Yes! Beyond some great falls in the Missouri there was a gate, by which the Shoshonis came out of the mountains to hunt the buffalo on the plains. It was there that she had been captured by the Minnetarees. Would the Snakes be friendly to the white men? Yes, unless they were frightened by the white men. Would she like to go back to her own people? Yes! Yes!

That was great luck for Sacagawea, but it was greater luck for the two captains. In the spring they broke camp, and taking Chaboneau as interpreter in case that the hostile Minnetarees were met, and little Sacagawea to spy out the land of the Snakes, and littlest Toussaint, the baby, as a peace sign to all tribes, with a picked party of thirty-one the two captains started on, up the swollen Missouri.

They made no mistake, in the Bird-woman. Of course she was used to roughing it; that was the life of an Indian woman--to do the hard work for the men, in camp and on the trail. But Sacagawea early showed great good sense.

Her husband Chaboneau almost capsized their canoe, by his clumsiness.

She neither shrieked nor jumped; but calmly reaching out from it, with her baby tightly held, she gathered in the floating articles. She saved stuff of much value, and the captains praised her.

"She's a better man than her husband," a.s.serted the admiring soldiers.

After hard travel, fighting the swift current, the strong winds, storms of rain and sleet, and monster grizzly bears, the expedition arrived at the Great Falls, as the Bird-woman had promised.

She had ridden and waded and trudged, like the rest. She had carried her baby on her back, and had built the fires for her husband, and cooked his meals, and kept right along with the men, and had not complained nor lagged.

At the Great Falls she was not so certain of the best route. This was a strange country to her, although she had known that the Falls were here. The Shining Mountains were in sight; the land of the Shoshonis lay yonder, to the southwest. All right.

The captains chose what seemed to be the best route by water, and headed on, to the southwest. Sacagawea gazed anxiously, right, left, and before. Her heart was troubled. She not only much desired to find her people, for herself, but she desired to help the great captains.

"The fate of the whole party" depended upon her--and she was just a slight little Indian woman!

The Snakes did not come down, by this way. It was too far north; it was the haunts of their enemies the Blackfeet and the Minnetarees, of whom they were deathly afraid. They were a timid mountain folk, poorly armed to fight the Sioux, who had obtained guns from traders down the Missouri.

After a time the river narrowed still more, and between rough banks poured out from a canyon of high cliffs, black at their base and creamy yellow above.

"The Gate of the Mountains, ain't it?" pa.s.sed the hopeful word.

Sacagawea agreed. She had heard of this very "gate," where the river burst into the first plains.

"When we come to the place where the river splits into three parts, that is Shoshoni country--my people will be there."

On forged the boats, poled and hauled and rowed, while the men's soggy moccasins rotted into pieces, and the mosquitoes bit fiercely. The two captains explored by land. Hunting was forbidden, lest the reports of the guns alarm the Snakes.

Abandoned Indian camp-sites were found, but the big-horn sheep peered curiously down from the tops of the cliffs along the river, and that was not a good sign. The game was too tame.

Captain Clark the Red Head took the advance, by land, to look for the Indians. Captain Lewis, the young Long Knife Chief, commanded the boats. Small United States flags were erected in the bows of each, as a peace signal.